


To Be Rewritten

by aquabluejay



Category: Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters
Genre: Enter Whump, Hurt No Comfort, avatars what even are they, but i was feeling it, cycle of suffering, forcible reprograming, making up the rules, sad fic, too much French, unintended concequences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-25 14:29:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14380599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aquabluejay/pseuds/aquabluejay
Summary: If Messiah realizes what’s happening, the entity makes no move to prevent it. Enter was the clever one, the one Messiah made to think for it. But Enter is only as good as Messiah made him and despite the program’s delusions of grandeur, all it took was a little human ingenuity to hack its avatar.What happens when the EMC grab and reprogram Enter. Messiah reacquires him and reprograms him again and sends him back. Again and again and again.





	To Be Rewritten

With Jin and J joining the team and it finally coming to light what an avatar is, it becomes clear that defeating Enter isn’t going to solve anything. It doesn’t matter how many times they destroy him, Enter will keep coming - Vaglass will keep coming. Therefore, the EMC begins to explore alternative strategies.

As an expert in Avatar technology, Jin gets to work himself and comes up with a few things. He determines that they can’t hold Enter indefinitely, but maybe they can hold him long enough to do some reprogramming.

In the next battle the Busters catch Enter by, switching their focus from the metaroid to him. They draw Enter in close and surround him. Until they manage to trap and hold him long enough for Jin to locate an access port at the back of Enter's neck and plug in, giving Jin remote access to the Avatar’s systems. Time is short and Jin doesn’t have enough to look at everything so he goes after Enter’s recent memory logs and objective programing. He wipes the most recent data and with a few keystrokes replaces it with something he hopes will take.

MISSION COMPLETE  
RETURN TO HYPERSPACE

They release Enter and to everyone’s surprise - he does. The avatar gets to his feet and stands there, seeming faintly confused for a moment. But then he bids them farewell in his usual fashion - as though the battle’s over and vanishes, presumably back into Hyperspace. It’s almost too easy. The Busters are left to take out the metaroid and the megazord when it arrives, which they do, both in record time.

They do it again the next time Enter appears. Jin gets a little more ambitious and tries to see if he can stop the Megazord too.

STOP  
ABORT MISSION  
RETURN TO HYPERSPACE

When the Busters release him, Enter pulls his netbook out of nowhere and types in a rapid series of commands. Moments later Nakamura announces over the coms that the megazord transport from Sub-Space has stopped. With a frown and a final puzzled look, Enter vanishes again, leaving the Go-Busters to mop up the metaroid with ease.

It’s stupidly easy. Something that Vaglass never planned for. Jin is probably the foremost expert in Avatar technology left alive, with a background in AI systems from his buddyroid work. They've been trying to fight Vaglass man to man, daunted by Enter's seeming immortality when really he’s been the most vulnerable part of Vaglass’s operation all along. They can't easily reach into Hyperspace and try to tamper with Messiah or the Megazord themselves, but Enter is frequently on Earth, within reach, and if they can control him they can affect the rest of Vaglass’s operations.

If Messiah realizes what’s happening, the entity makes no move to prevent it. It just reprograms Enter and sends him back with the same parameters each time. Messiah, despite its apparent impatience, just keeps trying the same thing over and over again. It tries over and over, like a simple program, because that’s what it is. Enter was the clever one, the one Messiah made to think for it. But Enter is only as good as Messiah made him and despite the program’s delusions of grandeur, all it took was a little human ingenuity to hack its avatar.

The EMC grab and reprogram Enter. Messiah reacquires him and reprograms him again and sends him back. The cycle repeats - day after day, week after week.

Having his memories tampered with and reprogrammed each time, Enter isn’t learning from their fights anymore, he isn’t changing strategy, he isn’t evolving.

He’s stuck.

And then Enter stops smiling - not joyfully, not even wickedly. He just stops. And then he stops getting angry too. The constant resetting of his systems by Messiah is slowly wiping away his personality, layer by layer. Each time he just frowns and tries to work harder. Until even that show of emotion fades away too.

His usual banter is reduced to reciting Messiah’s familiar decrees - that all the humans will be destroyed, that he will take all the Enetron, that the whole world will be Messiah's.

Before long Enter is no more than a shell of what he once was, having lost nearly all ability for independent thought and action. He is left with little but mechanical instructions, the demands of his Majesty, written and rewritten over everything else.

SEEK ENETRON  
FIGHT  
DESTROY

Enter’s attacks become less theatrical, more vicious and direct. But they become less creative too. He is at once simpler to fight and more dangerous in his single mindedness - like an animal, baring his teeth, attacking, and attacking again. Complying automatically with his majesty’s demands for temporary satisfaction through bloodlust and battle. He becomes the servant Messiah most desired.

Until he isn’t anymore.

The repeated reprogramming continues to affect Enter’s systems in deeper ways. As more and more corrupted and improperly cleared command code starts to pile up, it begins to show.

When Enter makes the first miscalculation the Busters almost miss it, caught up in their own battle strategy. But then it happens again, and Enter folds under their advance. They bring him down in moments and Jin gets to work once again.

After that things cascade quickly.

Caught in the remnants of conflicting directives, Enter’s timing slips. He freezes up - It’s nearly imperceptible - only for fractions of a second at a time - but devastating in the middle of a fight. He becomes no more of a challenge than the average metaroid - then less. The Busters have it down to a few moves to bring him down and pin him so Jin can reprogram him again.

Enter’s aim is increasingly off as the complex tracking programs that locate and orient Enter in real space falter. No amount of calibration can fix his steadily corrupting programs. In the end, his balance becomes so skewed that he is noticeably less steady on his feet.  
He is in decline.  
Catastrophic failure is imminent.

And just as with the metaroids, when it becomes clear that Enter’s usefulness is at an end, Messiah’s solution is to simply create a new Avatar. Escape is born, obedient, bloodthirsty, and madder than Enter ever was.

What do you do with a broken avatar?

Messiah intends to squeeze every final ounce of amusement out of Enter. And then, if he returns at all, Messiah will consume him and re-absorb the energy and data that was spent in his creation.

Recycling is always the most efficient course of action.

So Messiah sends Enter out on one last mission with Escape, even as the Go-Busters make ready to attack Hyperspace itself.

The two avatars split the busters appart, Enter draws Hiromu away while Escape engages the others head on. As he is, Enter can hardly hold his own against Hiromu. He folds under the Buster’s determination to reach Hyperspace and find answers about their parents - presumed dead or not. Hiromu sidesteps Enter’s cables and slashes with his blade. Enter’s cables fall limp against the ground, followed shortly by his body.

Glowing orange streams of data run from Enter’s wounds, fading before they can pool on the ground. Hiromu turns away, assured that the avatar is unraveling, the threat temporarily ended. He’s about to return to the others, fingers tapping his earpiece to report when he’s stopped in his tracks. Enter’s voice is soft, but unmistakable, drawing Hiromu’s attention back to him.

“S'il vous plaît… Aidez-moi...”

Hiromu comes closer, kneeling down to bring his earpiece mic within range. The channel is still open.

“I’m broken.  
Vous m'avez cassé...” Enter trails off again.

“What is he saying?” Hiromu asks and Jin’s voice answers, translating smoothly over the coms. _Help me -- You have broken me._

____

____

“Don’t send me back. Ma Majesty… He’ll eat me- my majesty.” Enter’s voice rises in pitch and he hurries over the words.

“Help Help Help Me, Red Buster.” The odd triplication that’s been absent in Enter’s speech resurfaces jarringly.

“Ça fait mal, vous savez... d'être réécrite.” -- _It hurts, you know, to be rewritten._

____

____

“Red Buster?” Enter repeats distantly.

“Ça va...”

Enter’s eyes drop closed and his body vanishes in a flash of code.

**Author's Note:**

> I actually wrote this like two years ago and I was never quite happy with it but I've been meaning to post it for ages so there it is.


End file.
